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Archive for graphics

Developing a Look

Nov29

I’m very busy right now with different stages of both my novels. I’m line editing Untimed and trying to get my first, The Darkening Dream, ready for publication. One of the more fun parts of this is the art design. The book has seven points of view and each chapter is written from one perspectives. To help subliminally differentiate them, I thought it would be cool to commission chapter heading engravings specific to each character.

The book is set in 1913 and packed with occult workings based on extensive research into real religious, pseudo-religious, and just plain magical belief systems. By real, I mean that people before 1913 believed and wrote about them. But in the book, they’re really real. This is a world consistant with ours, but where the creepy sordid and supernatural crawls just beneath the surface. And truth is stranger than fiction.

Given that the images needed to be black and white, I thought a style reminiscent of classical occult engravings of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries would be perfect. Iconography of demons, witches, and magic from creators who actually believed in them!

Below are historical engravings I dug up (google for the win!). I provided them to my artist to illustrate the mood and style I wanted for my original pieces.












The above examples are for STYLE, not for content. I like to think of these as reflecting the “occult engraving” style I want to emulate. They are engraved with a naive sensibility, hatched shading, awkward proportions, and western occult symbolic motifs. As a stickler for detail, I must confess that some of the above images are actually nineteenth century, such as the demon Baphomet (the goat headed one with one arm up and one arm down). Although these are cool I decided to target my style to the older wood block type (these later ones are probably copper plate) as the nineteenth century artist probably crafted the images more out of a sense of exotic and less out of true belief like the earlier more hysterical age that was prone to burning at the stake.

Unless you’re lucky enough to work with an artist who is willing to immerse themselves in your book and related materials, it’s essential to provide a clear direction, usually illustrated with a group images hinting at the style you want. Without reading your book and knowing as much as you do (fat chance) it’s unlikely that they are going to spontaneously generate a style that is consistent with the feel of your work. In future posts, I’ll show the examples I used to art direct my specific character images, and the results these produced.

Find out more about the writing of The Darkening Dream here.
Or specific articles on the look for: al-Nasir or Parris.

By: agavin
Comments (10)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Adobe Photoshop, Andy Gavin, Arts, Baphomet, Engraving, Esoteric and Occult, graphics, Icon, Image Editing, Interior book layout, Occult, Photoshop, Religion and Spirituality, The Darkening Dream, Visual Design, Visual effects

Dark Souls

Nov11

Dark Souls is an interesting entry into the 2011 holiday game rush. At one level, it has state of the art  graphics and physics-based ultra-visceral hand-to-hand fantasy combat. But it’s also a throwback to old school RPG game design.

This puppy doesn’t baby you in any way. You’re instantly tossed into an arcane character creation screen with a cryptic interface. You’re forced to make choices about class and attributes armed only with one sentence descriptions.

And it only gets less accessible from there.

After a pretty but incomprehensible bit of backstory you’re tossed into a grim and desolate undead prison. This serves as a “training level” and it is a lot easier than what is to come. But even this little intro ain’t easy — and the game gives you little or no clue what you’re supposed to do our how the mechanics work.

Now on the other hand: the control feels pretty darn good. And after a few minutes the hand to hand combat feels great. Vicious, but great. There’s a real satisfaction to smacking around the depressingly dank baddies.

Then comes the first “real” level. And I start to die. And die. And die. And die some more. The game is so hard that the first night I spend two straight hours dying between the first and second checkpoints of the first level!  My shoulder muscles got so knotted that I was literally in agony. And I didn’t even reach that bonfire (checkpoint). I had to go out.

But all I could think about was getting back to it. And when I returned, agitated as hell, at eleven at night, I wisely decided to force myself not to play — or I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Instead I came back to it the next afternoon and got through on my first shot. Then, entering virgin territory, I started to die again. And again.

This is a game that requires you to learn every little nuance of each stretch between the unfairly distant checkpoints. Death has a steep penalty: taking all your liquid souls (experience) from you. If you can reach your corpse before you die again you can recover it. Unfortunately, your corpse is usually being guarded by whatever killed you last time!

Relentlessly cruel as the game design is. I can’t help but want to keep playing. This might be the first action fantasy game where the you fight with hand held weapons and it actually feels like you’re fighting with hand held weapons. The physics based swords, axes, maces and whatnot hammer relentlessly on your foes — and on you. It’s pretty cool.

And the art design is damn creepy and atmospheric. Weird and mysterious. The enemies are varied and dastardly. I dig it. I’ll just have to see how far I can force myself through the sadistic gauntlet of evil!

More more posts on video games, click here.

Related posts:

  1. How do I get a job designing video games?
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Character creation, dark souls, demon souls, Experience point, Fantasy, Game design, graphics, Hand-to-hand combat, role playing game, RPG, Video game, video game review
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